Friday, January 26, 2018

Introducing my secondborn, Leonardo Nicholas, who arrived early Thursday morning, January 25. Although he was born on his estimated due date, his arrival surprised us. I took the time to watch the International Space Station fly in front of the half Moon from our front yard on Wednesday evening before I even knew he was on his way into the world. Before a friend even knew of the birth, he joked the ISS flyover portended the arrival of a new child.

ISS flyover Atlanta - January 24, 2018

I'll be on limited work hours for an undecided amount of time while on maternity "leave". Having done this once before, I know I can accomplish tasks one-handed while holding a newborn with the other. I type this as I balance sleeping little Leo on my lap and arm. Several people were amazed I was tweeting space news and commentary hours after his birth, but there wasn't a whole lot to do while resting in the birthing suite and scrolling on my phone is pretty easy these days. I can't stay away from my space community!

I'm excited to show both my children, Josephine and Leonardo, the night sky and the Universe as they grow.

Friday, December 29, 2017

This year was a time
of transition, adjustment, and growth for me professionally. In 2016 we moved from the Space Coast of Florida to Atlanta,
Georgia. We moved 4 times in 6 months, finally settling into our
current home in December 2016. Atlanta is a technology hub with a
small and growing space community. The year 2017 gave me the
opportunity to learn, grow, and find my place within this new space
community.

I won’t sugarcoat
it: I was at a low in January. I was exhausted from the moves and
felt isolated in a new area. I felt stuck in a bad contract with an
unhealthy client: overworked, significantly underpaid, and
dissatisfied with the direction of my work. Just a year after forming
my company Astralytical, I seriously considered calling it quits and
finding a traditional full-time position in my new city. I
learned some very valuable lessons about valuing myself, standing up
for myself, and structuring a contract so I’m not taken advantage
of. The experience made me a better professional and small business
owner.

The beauty of
running my own business is the freedom to change direction. In the
second week of January, I celebrated the sweet gift of a blank
canvas and refocused my efforts on the direction I wanted to grow
professionally. I published a small report predicting U.S. orbital
launch rates in 2017 (which I will soon update for 2018). I joined
local space-related organizations and met new colleagues.

In December I joined
the local NDIA chapter’s Space Committee and attended their annual
space breakfast with guest speaker George Nield of FAA AST. In
January I began attending space advocacy briefings with state-level
elected representatives and other state government officials with the NDIA Space Committee.

George Nield, Dec. 7, 2016

Posing at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta - Feb. 1, 2017

In mid January I had
the pleasure of getting a tour of SpaceWorks and their related
companies with John Olds. I was so grateful to feel so welcomed in my
new community.

Hello SpaceWorks! Jan. 10, 2017

In February I began
a new area of business: space career coaching. This has been a very
rewarding direction. I truly enjoy assisting students, recently
graduates, and mid-level professionals in their space career
journeys. This has also been a more popular service than I intended,
demonstrating the strong demand for guidance while pursuing a space
career.

Also in February I
attended my first Georgia Space Working Group meeting. This group
quickly turned into the planning committee for the first annual
Symposium on Space Innovations hosted here in Atlanta in October.

By the end of
February, I set up the Astralytical laboratory for space resources,
focused on lunar and Martian regolith (dirt) simulant.

Measuring lunar regolith simulant - Feb. 17, 2017

In March I joined my
local astronomy club and started attending monthly meetings. I also
took my daughter to a local science museum with fun space exhibits and to the Atlanta Science Festival dressed as a mini astronaut. In
connection with the science festival, I attended a talk by astronaut
Mark Kelly.

Astronaut Josephine and me at the Tellus Museum - March 5, 2017

Posing with the Atlanta Science Festival mascot at the Mark Kelly talk - March 14, 2017

Atlanta Science Festival - March 25, 2017

In March, after the release of the Trump
Administration’s proposed budget, I passionately fought against the
cuts to the NASA Education office, an office which has significantly helped me
and so many others in starting my space career. Thankfully, these
cuts were reversed by Congress.

I was the guest
speaker at the AIAA Atlanta chapter dinner in March, which I joined
back in January. I gave some preliminary results from my
to-be-published book about millennials working in the space industry.
I got some enthusiastic and colorful responses from the older
generations, the most feedback I’ve ever gotten from a talk.

AIAA Atlanta talk - March 28, 2017

Atlanta is home to
several broadcasting companies. In June, I got a tour of the Intelsat
facility, including their antenna dish field and control centers.

Intelsat - June 7, 2017

In June I presented
preliminary research regarding Spaceport Camden to a group hosted by
Camden County, Georgia. A few days later, I was a guest speaker in
the Camden Roundtable on the same topic. I had been working on the
report for a few months at that point and was ready to discuss some
of the findings with the community that would be most impacted by the
spaceport.

Spaceport Camden presentation - June 15, 2017

In June I was a
speaker at the first annual We Rise Women in Tech conference in Atlanta,
highlighting NASA’s coding projects and needs. I was also
interviewed by the Women Who Code organization for their blog.

We Rise conference - June 24, 2017

I crashed the July
AIAA Propulsion conference networking events and got to reconnect with some
colleagues. I had the pleasure of meeting astronaut Sandy Magnus
again.

AIAA Propulsion conference - July 11, 2017

Also in July I traveled to the new Braves stadium in Atlanta to check out the traveling Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex exhibit on a Mars concept vehicle. The Batmobile design isn’t at all what a Mars vehicle would look like but it’s fun for the public.

Mars concept vehicle - July 16, 2017

Also in July I took a
trip to my old stomping ground: Huntsville, Alabama. Thanks to my
friend Yohon and a few other friends and colleagues, I got some great
tours of old and new sites at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center,
including accidentally stumbling upon a lab where I used to work.

So many historic sites at Redstone Arsenal and MSFC! - July 14, 2017

While in Huntsville,
I attended the 10th annual Space Camp Hall of Fame
Induction Ceremony. I worked as volunteer staff for the first event a
decade prior, and I’m a 6-time Space Camp alumna. It was fun to
reconnect with Space Camp and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center! I also met astronauts Charlie Bolden and Hoot Gibson again.

Posing with the Saturn V rocket at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center - July 14, 2017

In August I traveled
to the beautiful town of Helen, Georgia to see the total solar
eclipse. It was one of the most beautiful and emotional events I’ve
ever witnessed, surprisingly so. I’m now hooked and so excited for
the next total solar eclipse!

Solar eclipse totality from Helen, Georgia - Aug. 21, 2017

All smiles after the solar eclipse totality - Aug. 21, 2017

In September I was a
guest speaker for two talks in the Space Track of the huge DragonCon
in Atlanta. It was a pleasure to speak with my fellow panelists on
the topics of commercial space and NASA’s Deep Space Gateway. It was fun re-meeting private spaceflight participant Richard Garriott.

DragonCon! Sept. 2, 2017

Finally in October,
the conference planning team was able to celebrate the successful
first Symposium on Space Innovations! A lot of work brought us all
together and it was a hit. I was especially thankful to moderate a
panel on Launch, Landing, and Spaceports.

In partnership with
the conference, we kicked off the Georgia Space Alliance, a nonprofit
I had been working with a team for months to create! The kick-off
party was a great success, a larger turn-out than expected with great
enthusiasm for the future.

The Mission Possible
report on Spaceport Camden was finally published in November! After
many months of effort, it was so rewarding to release it to the
public and get such positive feedback. And a thank-you to those who
made the report beautiful with images and graphic art.

I had the pleasure
of reconnecting with Eric Stallmer of the Commercial Spaceflight
Federation when he came to Atlanta to be the guest speaker for the
NDIA annual space breakfast in November.

Eric Stallmer of Commercial Spaceflight Federation - Nov. 9, 2017

Earlier in the year,
I connected with another space-related organization SSPI. In
November, I attended their program on NASA broadcasting from the ISS
and elsewhere. I also got a tour of the Encompass facility which
included their antenna dish field and control centers. I was
surprised to learn all of NASA TV’s broadcasts go through that
facility.

In December, I
almost made my space movie premier! I arrived at the studio for a
fitting for the movie First Man about Neil Armstrong, but was cut due
to being visibly pregnant. Next time.

My First Man costume tag - Dec. 2, 2017

I wrapped up the
year with the 6th Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers
Conference in Broomfield, Colorado – one of my favorite
conferences! I’ve attended all six since 2010 and I’ve been on
board as conference staff for the past two. Although I got caught in
the Great Atlanta Airport Power Outage of 2017 and therefore missed
the first day of the conference, I was still able to enjoy two days
of suborbital spaceflight and space science fun.

I'm ending 2017 on a high. I've met so many great people and participated in wonderful spacey things in the past year! I'm grateful for where I am right now. And I suspect 2018 will be even better with more spacey plans in the works! I look forward even more to the surprises to come.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

My favorite part are
the questions. Some of them ask me to repeat information I already
gave, some of them are absurd, and some of them are truly insightful for such
young students. Eyes light up and imaginations expand when these kids
learn of what’s going on with human spaceflight now and imagine
themselves as space travelers. These dreamers make my time and
effort worth it every time.

Once or twice per
month, I get a chance to speak with students of multiple ages and in many locations. Sometimes I can travel in person and speak with these
young learners face-to-face. Sometimes I’m unable to travel to
speak in person because of the distances involved, as was the case
with an aspiring group of engineers in Iraq, and we use internet
video instead. I’m still able to converse and show off lab props
over a screen, sometimes even better than in person.

Most of the students
I speak with are late elementary school, middle school, and early high school aged, interested
in many areas but most likely undecided about their future career
paths. I often start out the conversation by asking them what they
want to be when they grow up and if any of them want to be
scientists. The range and complexity of answers I receive is
astounding. These kids, as young as some of them are, are already
forming images of themselves in careers. How many of them have
pictured themselves doing space-related work, whether they’re an
aspiring aeronautical engineer or an artist?

A couple years ago,
I spent some months tutoring a group of high school girls living in a
foster home. They were normal teenage girls living through
extraordinary circumstances. In some cases, the lack of positive role
models or complete information put them at a disadvantage as they
prepared for adulthood. I was struck by one girl who informed me that
she’ll probably become a stripper when she graduates high school
because she likes to dance. Only by continuing the conversation did
she begin to realize her job options were much larger and less
limiting than she had previously concluded.

How many students
are not even aware of their potential because they haven’t been
exposed to information that can open their minds? How many students
lack positive and relatable role models despite being surrounded by
teachers and other potential mentors? How many students know that
they really can achieve a STEM career if that’s what they want to
do? How many students know that they can write space stories (fiction
and nonfiction), draw space art, make a profit through space
businesses, develop government policies and international treaties
related to space, and dance in the microgravity of space, without any
STEM inclination at all?

My hope is that by
volunteering my time to speak with these students, I can open their
minds and help them picture a different world, a world where they can
be involved in space if they want to be. I do not charge for these
speaking engagements. My company Astralytical does not pay for my
time nor travel costs. My volunteer STEM education efforts cost me
money, which I consider to be worth it.

If you so choose,
you can help me in my goal of inspiring students to fall in love with
the Universe. Your donation can help offset time, travel, and supply
costs. You can be right there in the classroom with me, so to speak.
Please give me and these students a little boost if you’re able.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I’ve been very
fortunate to spend almost all of my adult life living in space hubs:
the Space Coast of Florida, followed by Huntsville, Alabama, then
back to Florida. I’ve immersed myself in the space community by
choosing to live where space activity happens. (Also, where it’s
warm most of the time.) I naturally feel connected to “my people”
- fellow upward-looking forward-thinking space enthusiasts.

When my husband’s
career took us to Atlanta a year ago, I naturally began to seek a new
space community. I didn’t need to look hard in Florida or
Huntsville – space is everywhere. But the Atlanta area, and more
broadly in the state of Georgia, is not known for space activity.
There is no solid space identity here, not yet. I didn’t find the
space community I sought.

I did find space
activity and groups, pockets of people here and there, all over the
state. Groups that didn’t talk to each other, didn’t coordinate,
didn’t even know of each other’s existence in most cases. There
was little to no collaboration or communication between the academic
space pocket, the military space pocket, the satellite broadcasting
pocket, the entrepreneurial newspace pocket, the AIAA chapters, the
variety of amateur astronomy and rocket clubs, the tiny space law
student club, the small space policy pocket responsible for 2017’s
Georgia Space Flight Act, and the proposed Camden Spaceport in
southeast Georgia.

It’s hard to
pinpoint when Georgia Space Alliance was conceived in my mind. It
could have been as early as last December at a holiday party when I
learned the local National Space Society chapter was inactive. It
could have been in January when I toured one of Atlanta’s space
companies and was encouraged by the CEO to take the reigns in leading
an organization. It could have been in February when I began
attending meetings with state elected officials and realized the need
for a unified space organization. And, most importantly, that no one
else was motivated enough to start one. Later in February, a
colleague and I met with two state economic development employees
about promoting space and was told, “You’re just two voices. You
need an association behind you.” At that point, Georgia Space
Alliance was an inevitability. And I was the one get it off the
ground.

The name was
carefully chosen. Georgia Space Alliance is state-wide, not just
focused on Atlanta. It’s an alliance of the existing groups,
companies, organizations, and individuals. It’s not meant to
replace or compete with any existing space-related effort. Its
goal is to unify, to bring people together, to encourage
communication and collaboration, to promote what is already happening
and what is to come. Even the word “space” is meaningful. Georgia
already has a very strong aerospace industry and aerospace community,
aerospace primarily meaning aviation. The focus of Georgia Space
Alliance is not aerospace – it’s space –the much smaller but
growing branch of aerospace in the state.

Georgia Space
Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This, too, was carefully chosen.
The organization’s focus isn’t economic development, political
lobbying, or providing an income for its leadership. In fact, the
organization is entirely volunteer-based at this time. There may be
GSA activities that promote economic development and advocate for
space within local and national governments, but GSA is so much more.

GSA is first and
foremost educational: educating its membership, educating students of
all levels, and educating the wider community. It is community
development. It is social and professional networking. It is
multidisciplinary; it’s an alliance of Georgia’s existing
strengths, space-related and otherwise.

In the months from
March to now, I’ve worked in the background building an
organization and a team. Having to balance this effort with my
existing work meant that I worked slowly, working toward an October
public kick-off. I’m very grateful for the great leadership team
who stepped forward to work toward this common goal! I could not have
put this all together in time without their efforts.

We still have much
work to do spreading the word, registering members, gaining corporate
sponsors and partner organizations, and planning future activities.
We have many ideas! How much we’re able to do depends on the number
of people who volunteer to assist and the number of sponsors who can
chip in funds.

An October kick-off
is also meaningful. This evening (Oct. 18) starts the first Symposium
on Space Innovations, a new space conference hosted by Georgia Tech
and Georgia’s Center of Innovation for Aerospace. The state hosts a
Space Working Group which I joined at the start of the year, which
quickly morphed into the organizing committee for this conference. We
of the organizing committee are all very excited to put together and
share it with you all! We wanted to showcase Georgia’s space
achievements and bring to the state some excellent space speakers and
topics, and we’ve succeeded in both goals.

The Georgia Space
Alliance’s kick-off Space Party is the conference after-party on
Thursday evening, open to the public. It’s a way for everyone to
get together to network, socialize, and relax, the busyness of the
conference behind them. There will be space art on display. There
will be an optional costume contest with space prizes. I’m looking
forward to connecting with existing friends and colleagues and
meeting online space friends in person for the first time.

Georgia Space
Alliance will take the momentum and energy of the conference and the
networking and community-forming of the kick-off party and carry that
into the new year. GSA will participate in February’s Georgia
Aerospace Day and encourage our members to engage with our elected
officials. Yuri’s Night will come to Georgia in April (for the
first time?), potentially with a professional development event for
students and young professionals. GSA’s Education Committee will
plan a charity activity for Georgia STEM education. We may start a
lecture series meant for the general public, illuminating connections
between space and other fields. We may host an amateur rocket launch
activity. We may restart the tradition of hosting an annual SpaceUp
unconference. We will organize launch parties for Camden Spaceport’s
first public rocket launches. As Georgia’s space community needs
evolve, so will GSA.

I’m looking
forward to seeing the seed of Georgia’s space community form, a
seed that will grow into something much larger. I don’t yet know
what that will look like, but I’m excited to find out!

Friday, October 6, 2017

On Wednesday, the
60th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, I was reading a
Space News article about the event. One line stood out to me: “Space
would be a place where the new man of the future, the communist man,
would live, explore and create.” I immediately pictured a towering,
heroic man resembling Yuri Gagarin preparing humanity’s way to
explore the cosmos.

I realized something
about myself just then. My initial instinct is to take words
literally. If the word is “man”, I picture a man. If the word is
“manned” as in manned spacecraft, I picture a man or men in a
spacecraft. An instant later, I correct myself. I know better
intellectually. The speaker or writer didn’t literally mean man the
majority of the time, they meant human. But by that point, it’s too
late. The image of a male has already formed in my head.

Am I the only person
who thinks this way, I wondered? Does everyone else in the world
instantly translate “man” as “human”? Or are there others
whose first instinct is to literally imagine or interpret “man”
or “manned” as a man or men?

I took to social
media for an unscientific poll on the matter. I asked my
mostly-space-involved Twitter audience and mostly-not-space-involved
Facebook audience the following question and offered the following
choices:

If I say "manned",
what is your IMMEDIATE 1st impression/image?

1) a man

2) a woman

3) men and women

4) gender-neutral
human

Of 106 responses on
a 24 hour poll on Twitter:

42% voted
gender-neutral human

32% voted a man

26% voted men and
women

0% voted a woman.

Of the 11 responses
on Facebook, 100% voted gender-neutral human.

So altogether, with
117 votes:

47% voted
gender-neutral human

29% voted a man

24% voted men and
women

0% voted a woman.

From this
(unscientific) poll, I came to two conclusions:

First, I’m not the
only one who literally thinks “a man” as an immediate first
impression. A bit more than a quarter of the respondents think the
same way I do. Unreasonably extrapolating this out, it’s possible a
quarter of the English-speaking population forms the image of a man
in their minds when reading about manned spaceflight, spacemen,
unmanned, man-made, and other gender-specific terms.

Second, the majority
of people don’t think this way. This may explain why transitioning
from gender-specific terms to gender-neutral terms (e.g., manned
spaceflight to human spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is
unimportant to some people. For most people who use gender-specific
terms when they mean the gender-neutral equivalents, it’s a habit
from years past, a slip of the tongue, or a concept that never
occurred to them. But for some, they just don’t see the big deal in
using gender-specific wording. Maybe in their minds, everyone
automatically knows “man” means human. They may even think the
emphasis on gender-neutral language is overly politically correct.

This week, I was
introduced to a friend-of-a-friend whose first-grade-aged daughter
wants to be an astronaut. But for some reason, despite knowledge of
female astronauts, this girl thinks only boys can be astronauts. The
mom said when they search for astronauts online, they find mostly
male images. This could be because most astronauts have been men.
This could also be because the general perception of “astronaut”
in popular culture is male or for boys.

Since becoming a
mother two years ago, I see the deep and widespread sexism in baby
and child marketing from birth onward. Space-themed baby or children
items are almost always labeled for boys. What impact does this
gender-labeling of space, combined with gender-specific terms such as
manned spaceflight and spaceman, have on the quarter of the
population who literally forms an image of a male astronaut in their
minds when hearing these terms? Is it enough to turn off a
space-loving first grader who may go forward in life thinking a space
career isn’t for her because she’s a girl?

Words matter. Word
choice may not matter to you or to the majority of the population.
But it may make a difference to others who think and process language
differently than you do. I caught myself just today saying
“congressmen” when I meant “members of congress” as a slip of
the tongue. I recognize the changes I need to make within myself to
be more accurate and inclusive in my language. Change comes from
within ourselves first.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

This space is dedicated to my adventures in space, but I also have adventures in other areas of life. Today I'd like to introduce you to our second child, Leonardo Nicholas, expected to enter this world in late January.

Leonardo is inspired by brilliant scientist, inventor, and artist Leonardo da Vinci. And because I worked on International Space Station research, the ISS multi-purpose logistics module Leonardo also came to mind. Only after my husband and I agreed on the name did I learn that Leonardo is my husband's favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Nicholas is in memory of a family member gone but not forgotten.

Assuming all goes according to plan, I'll be taking a few weeks off in January and February, to be determined. I'll also have more take-a-space-baby-to-work stories to share next year. We're so excited for our next adventure with two space youngins!

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

One coincidental
benefit of moving to the northern Atlanta area last year was the
relatively short distance needed to travel to the totality zone of
the so-called Great American Eclipse of 2017. Some people planned
their trip years in advance. I got in my car at 11 AM and drove 60
miles northeast to Helen, Georgia, known for its German Alpine design
and atmosphere.

Hello Helen, Georgia! I parked temporarily to take this photo.

I had intended to
leave a little earlier in the day. But life happens. Specifically,
some wild animal was trapped in between our first floor and our
basement ceiling and our cats were flipping out, so naturally I
needed to investigate. Finally, I decided to let the cats sort it out
and hit the road.

I had also intended
to arrive in Helen in time for the start of the eclipse at around
1:00. However, I got hungry. We stopped for lunch just short of
Helen. I allowed myself a, “That’s so cool!” moment when I
peered at the Sun through my solar glasses in the parking lot before
getting back in my car.

My daughter's cracker snack became a solar eclipse projector.

I had no specific
destination in mind. Because the Sun was so high in the sky, any spot
gave as good of a view as any other. But my 20-month-old daughter had
taken a nap in the car and I wanted to give her space to run around.
Thankfully, the town of Helen was crowded but not the park. I found a
bench on the grass to set up my camera and take my initial telephoto
shots. A fellow sky-watcher with a similar aged child commented how
independent my Josephine is, entertaining herself with rocks. It’s
a good thing, too, because I didn’t want to take my eyes off the
sky for long.

Eventually Josephine
noticed the narrow, shallow stream. For the next hour, nothing
distracted her from the sheer joy of picking up river rocks and
throwing them in the water. I relocated to the stream bank where I
sat with my equipment, in disbelief of what I was seeing.

No photo I’ve
taken or seen captured what I saw yesterday. It goes beyond imagery. The
darkness, the senses, the emotions, all too complex to be summed up
in a picture. I’ve never had an experience like that before. The
total solar eclipse was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever
witnessed.

Solar eclipse in the lens flare.

In the minutes
before totality, it dawned (or dusked) on me that the darkness was
descending as if it were sunset. So much about the atmosphere, except
the position of the Sun in the sky, felt like dusk. I even had the
instinctual maternal thought of, “My 20-month-old is too young to
play in a stream in the dark!”

As for my eclipse
watching partner, the Sun didn’t hold her interest at all, and she
kept throwing rocks into the water as if nothing else in the world
was more important. I even tried to guide her head upward during
totality, but she fought me and won, returning to her water play.

As the tiniest
slivers of light shined, dimmed, and disappeared, cheers erupted all
around me. I didn’t expect this. I was not in a crowded place. But
in the distance in every direction, shouts and claps echoed. Complete
strangers, completely different people, all united as one to admire
the beauty of our Solar System and our place in it. I couldn’t help
but cheer as well.

I have degrees in
astrophysics. I am a space professional. In the minutes of solar
eclipse totality, all intellectual thoughts left me. No word left my
lips other than “Wow” and “Oh my God.” I don’t know when I
started crying, but water filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.
I didn’t expect to cry. And I didn’t let tears stop me from
continuing to stare in awe as our closest planetary neighbor blocked out the light of our closest star.

I still can't believe I took this shot without a tripod.

As the light
returned, I felt as though I had taken part in something much greater
than myself. In reality, I took no part in it at all. The motions of
the Earth, Sun, and Moon are all set in predictable clockwork, and we
humans just observe. But by gathering together for this single
purpose, we were a movement of another kind. I had a huge smile on my
face.

Post-totality smile!

We stayed a little
while longer. I put the solar glasses on my face and leaned back on
the stream bank, not caring about capturing photos or missing
totality. Josephine kept playing with rocks and water as if nothing
else was happening. Eventually I dragged her away and set off for
home.

It took much longer
to get back than it did to get there. The park road was at such a
standstill, I put my car in park, opened my car door, and watched the
eclipse on and off for another half an hour more. Eclipse traffic
combined with commuter traffic to create a mess on the road to home.
But it was worth it. Seeing a total solar eclipse was worth every
minute I spent sitting in traffic while my daughter screamed.

I experienced the
eclipse many times over since then, processing my own photos and
browsing others’ postings. What strikes me is how much this astronomical alignment brought us all together: space enthusiasts and regular people, friends and strangers alike. People who otherwise wouldn't care about celestial objects were staring in wonder. The solar eclipse brought rare unity to our country, centered around the Sun and the Moon. Thank you all for sharing in the astro love!

Monday, August 7, 2017

There are many
topics on my backlog to blog about: fun space things I’ve seen, new
space things I’ve accomplished, my plans for the future. But what’s
on my mind today is a matter of heart: mistakes, scapegoating, and
team discord.

Bullying, which
causes psychological harm to children everywhere, also affects adults
in the workplace. I was victim to a workplace bully in graduate
school who harmed my perception of myself, slowed my
research progress, and exasperated my sense of impostor syndrome in
the laboratory that took me years to overcome.

Preparing for my
first ZeroG Corporation parabolic microgravity flight in grad school
was a joyful, if exhausting experience. Finally, I would be able to
float in free-fall – just as astronauts do – even if for only 30
seconds at a time. And I would be accomplishing real science as I
soared, science I needed for my PhD. I wanted to have a blast, but I
also wanted the experiment to be a success.

Which makes the
outcome of that experience all the more frustrating.

Each team member was
trained to handle a specific role during the flight. We had four team
members and four roles. All four tasks needed to be accomplished
during each microgravity-creating parabola in order to make the
experiment a success. We had four experiment boxes to run the
experiment four times, but only one laptop and camera setup.

My task was to press
a button at the right time to release an impactor (a marble) to shoot
at a very slow speed into a container of sand (fake Moon or Mars
dirt/regolith simulant). But I couldn’t do my job alone; I relied
on another team member with a better viewing angle to tell me when to
fire the trigger. Our jobs depended on each other. We all needed to
work together.

The first two tries
were a flop. The trigger didn’t fire. Something must have been
loose in the wiring. The third try worked! But my team member got too
excited and told me to press the trigger too early. We weren’t
having the best luck with scientific research.

At this point, we
were losing team members. Two of the team had tapped out by then,
victim of the Vomit Comet. We prepared for that eventuality, although
admittedly not well. Each member of the team had spent a few minutes
in the lab learning all the other team member’s tasks in case we
needed to take over for a sick teammate. Had we thought a bit more
ahead of time, we would have realized a few minutes of training would
not cut it in a high-pressure quick-paced floating environment where
it was hard enough to control limbs, let alone the experiment. But at
the time, I had no choice. I took over the camera operation as well
as my triggering duties and hoped for the best.

The best is not what
happened. I don’t know how, but instead of recording 30 seconds of
data on our forth and final experiment attempt, the video recorded a
fraction of a second that looped for 30 seconds. I had never seen
that happen before and had no idea the software even had that
feature. I wasn’t sure if it was something I had done wrong,
something the previous camera operator had done wrong, or just a very
odd glitch in the camera software. But I was the one who pressed the
camera buttons, so I accepted blame.

Up until this point,
my workplace bully (the lab manager) had no legitimate complaints
against me. She was envious of my educational success beyond her own,
frustrated she had no authority over me, and infuriated that she
couldn’t get under my skin, at least not yet. But the camera
failure gave her the perfect opportunity and she jumped on it.
Despite the fact that three of the four experiments failed for other
reasons and the forth failure may or may not have my fault, I became
the scapegoat for the whole mission failure.

With my own
admission of possible guilt and no useful data to show for the ZeroG
flight, she successfully turned half the lab against me,
impressionable undergraduates who depended on her opinion for a job
and who she also bullied to a lesser degree. The lab was a
dysfunctional mess and a toxic work environment. I accepted increased
isolation in the lab for my own mental health, trying my best to
avoid contact with her.

My biggest failing
was to internalize her lies about me. I began to see my labwork and
my aptitude as a scientist in a more negative light, wondering if I
really was a failure. This doubt hindered my success for years.

My bully petitioned
hard to prevent me from flying during our next parabolic flight
opportunity, this time with NASA in Houston. But with multiple
flights over multiple days, we needed a larger team of flyers. I did
fly for one of those parabolic flights. This time, it was me who got
sick halfway through the flight and had to pass off my job tasks to
another team member. And this time around, despite the multiple
flights, our experiment failed for other reasons. I could not be
blamed.

Despite the research
failures, the team disharmony, and the eventual vomiting, I did have
a blast during those parabolic flights. They remain one of the most
amazing experiences I’ve ever had. I would do it again in a
heartbeat if given the opportunity.

Floating around in microgravity - Nov. 2011

When I read about
today’s Rocket Lab test flight failure because someone on the
ground forgot to tick a box in ground control software, I feel for
that person. The weight of failure on his/her shoulders must be very
heavy right now. It is my deepest hope that whoever was responsible
for the software mistake which doomed the Rocket Lab launch feels
supported by his/her team, not isolated or ostracized.

Poor coworkers might
scapegoat an employee who makes a mistake. But in reality, mistakes
like that don’t happen in isolation. A unified, well-working team
would work together during preparation to ensure easy mistakes don’t
happen, but when they do, they would band together to accept fault as
a group and seek solutions for the future. Mission success depends on
the efforts of all, working together for a common purpose, holding
each other up, working past failures, and celebrating successes. Mission success depends on everyone.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

The most
space-intensive summers I ever had were my two NASA Academy summers,
as an intern in 2005 and a co-leader in 2006. Those two summers
produced awesome and awe-inspiring space memories and two memorable
Independence Days. Traditional fireworks aren’t the only things
that flash, burn, and bang!

In 2005, my NASA
cohort of interns based at Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama traveled to the Washington, DC area for tours of
NASA Headquarters, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of
Maryland. We also hit up various monuments, the zoo, and museums such
as both Smithsonian Air & Space locations while we were there.

Late evening July 3,
2005, our group gathered at a University of Maryland auditorium with
other students and invited guests. We heard a talk by University of
Maryland professor and NASA Deep Impact mission PI Michael A'Hearn
and a few other scientists on the team. We crashed the VIP section of
the auditorium to fill up on snacks and grab free mission swag (pins,
posters, etc.).

At 1:45 AM on July
4, three large screens showed a live view of the Deep Impact probe
approaching comet Tempel 1. We could see the comet clearly. As the
minutes went by, we could see craters getting larger as the impactor
got closer. Finally the images stopped coming. Cheers erupted from
the team at JPL in California. Finally, we could see why. The bottom
of the comet had been smashed! A bright flash could be seen from
where the impactor had hit, and the images that followed showed the
flash growing larger and brighter. It was a spectacular Independence
Day explosion, even better than the fireworks we watched at the
National Mall later that day.

Americans smacking into a comet on July 4, 2005.

I was a student at
Florida Institute of Technology on the Space Coast when the Space
Shuttle Columbia was destroyed upon returning to land at Kennedy
Space Center in 2003. We were all devastated. The space shuttles were
grounded for two and a half years. Finally, in July 2005, Space
Shuttle Discovery launched its return-to-flight mission. Our NASA
Academy group was able to witness that spectacular piece of history
from the VIP bleachers at Kennedy Space Center.

However, all was not
well with the shuttle program, and the space vehicles were grounded
for another year. My NASA Academy team in 2006 was able to travel to
Kennedy Space Center in July 2006 to see the second Space Shuttle
Discovery return-to-flight launch on July 4.

We spent much of
that day having fun at the KSC Visitor Complex, which I highly
recommend. As launch time approached, used our free-access passes to
drive to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Some of our team watched from
the ground around the VAB. I followed a few others to climb an unused
mobile launch platform to get a view above the trees. Of all the
spots I’ve seen a launch, it was one of the best views!

At T-4 minutes, a
security guard climbed the mobile launch platform, and there was a
collective gasp. “You all have to go,” he said. I stared in
shocked disbelief until he said, “Just kidding!” and joined us.
From then on, I was in a world of happiness and awe. Apparently some
people were chanting the countdown, but I couldn’t hear them. I was
in my own world where only me and Discovery existed.

A rocket ignition is
the best type of firework there is!

My view of the Space Shuttle Discovery launch from atop the treeline on July 4, 2006.

Although we’ve
been waiting patiently the past two days for the SpaceX Falcon 9
launch of Intelsat 35e, we will not get a rocket launch firework
display tonight. But here’s to hoping for a future SpaceX launch
success and future spacey Independence Days to come!